Information Technology Security as Scored by Management Budget

In information technology security as scored by management budget, the author examines information technology (IT) security in the context of organizational management, business, complexity leadership theories, and current IT security scholarship. Based on well-known organizational power and politics theory as well as accounting, budget, and management literature, the chapter examines what is known about the impact of power and politics on IT security and the importance of budgetary gamesmanship as illustrated by understanding that the budget as a game, the politics of allocation within an organization, the influence of budgetary bias and how it shapes what CISOs must understand and master, the unfunded mandate impediment through which each the organization picks winners and losers under the auspices of “doing more with less.” The author suggests a future framework for IT security-management-budget review that includes measures that track expenditure versus the power alignment and how to gauge the net effect on an organization's information-technology security posture.

Beyond SOA and REST for Distributed Application Integration

The fundamental problem of distributed application integration is reducing application coupling as much as possible while still meeting the minimum interoperability requirements. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and representational state transfer (REST) are the most used architectural styles to deal with this problem. This chapter performs a comparative study of these styles and shows that, while both solve basic interoperability, neither of them minimizes coupling, since data description schemas are shared by the interacting applications (symmetric interoperability). SOA is oriented towards behavior (services) and REST towards state (structured resources). Services have no structure and resources have a fixed service. This chapter proposes a new architectural style, structured services, that combines the best characteristics of SOA and REST (services can have structure and resources can implement application-specific services), while using asymmetric interoperability (schema compatibility is based on structural compliance and conformance) to minimize application coupling.

Information and Computer Technologies for Improving International Assessment

International assessments such as the trends in international math and science study (TIMSS), the program for international student assessment (PISA), and the international computer and information literacy study (ICILS) have traditionally relied on paper and pencil administration. These assessments are rapidly transforming into or have been developed as computer-based tests due to advances in information and communication technologies of the past decade. These computer-based assessments will eventually make traditional paper and pencil assessments obsolete. Specifically, international and other large-scale assessments can benefit from the use of automatic item generation (AIG) and/or computer adaptive testing (CAT) to enhance and strengthen test security and validity, as well as reduce costs over the course of multiple test administrations, encourage student engagement, and efficiently measure students' abilities.

Big Data Technologies and Management

Developments in information technology and its prevalent growth in several areas of business, engineering, medical, and scientific studies are resulting in information as well as data explosion. Knowledge discovery and decision making from such rapidly growing voluminous data are a challenging task in terms of data organization and processing, which is an emerging trend known as big data computing. Big data has gained much attention from the academia and the IT industry. A new paradigm that combines large-scale compute, new data-intensive techniques, and mathematical models to build data analytics. Thus, this chapter discusses the background of big data. It also discusses the various application of big data in detail. The various related work and the future direction would be addressed in this chapter.

Agile Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology

Business process management (BPM) encompasses the discovery, modelling, monitoring, analysis, and improvement of business processes. Traditional BPM limitations in addressing changes in business requirements have resulted in a number of agile BPM approaches that seek to accelerate the redesign of business process models. In a previous work, the authors proposed the business process and practice alignment methodology (BPPAM) to uncover, supervise, and improve business processes based on actual work practices. BPPAM aims at enabling business process modeling, supervision, and improvement through the distinction of two dimensions: (1) business processes and (2) work practices. This chapter describes an agile version of the methodology (ABPPAM). Agility is infused in ABPPAM through the redefinition of phases, roles, and iteration cycles. The chapter illustrates the effects of agility for the business discovery phase of ABPPAM through a case study analysis of a real organizational setting.

ERP Post-Implementation Success Assessment

Enterprise resource planning implementation is a costly project that tends to face serious challenges. Thus, it is essential to perform the success assessment at the post-implementation stage of an ERP project to evaluate how much the system has succeeded in achieving its predetermined objectives. This chapter proposes an extended framework for assessing a firm's ERP post-implementation success. The factors contributing to the success assessment have been adapted from the original model of Ifinedo et al., which encompasses service quality, system quality, information quality, individual, workgroup, and organizational impact surrogates. Also, a new surrogate of inter-organizational impact proposed in this research. Using this model, the firm's ERP system success can be determined and the required improvement projects can be proposed to promote the success level. The proposed model is then applied to a real international company in the field of manufacturing and supplying turbines to measure the firm's ERP post-implementation success. Finally, the results of the assessment are discussed.

Using Social Media for Healthcare Recruiting

Healthcare organizations have turned to social media to attract applicants to hard-to-fill positions. This chapter is focused on the use of social media as part of e-recruiting strategies in two healthcare organizations—one located in the Rocky Mountain region and the other in the Mid-Atlantic region. Interviews with human resources recruiters and administrators provided insight into the mechanisms by which healthcare organizations are utilizing social media to move the needle within their organizations.

Roles and Impacts of Automatic Item Generation on Assessment Research, Practice, and Policy

The development of science and technology will have widespread impacts throughout society, and the “assessment” will also be a sensitive area to the impact of scientific and technological developments. Especially information communication technology, or intelligent communication technology (ICT), which has developed rapidly in the twenty-first century, has had a sudden and even destructive effect on various studies and the field. The assessment, which has the most central function of collecting, processing, and analyzing data, would be one of the most rapidly changing areas under the influence of this ICT. This chapter deals with the following four topics about automation of AIG. Firstly, this chapter will introduce the meaning/implication of automation in AIG and analyze how automation of AIG affects the technology-based assessment system. In particular, this chapter will illustrate how AIG's automation will affect education, professional training, and/or public policy. Finally, this chapter concludes with a discussion of the future directions of AIG research and development.

Information Technology Pre-Risk Governance

Pre-risk governance is an extension of the risk management paradigm that allows for risk analysis prior to making a decision on whether a business objective should move forward and what the possible risks may be. Instead of making business decisions that will affect or impact technology, and the associated people, processes, and policy and then including necessary staff in systems planning after the fact, pre-risk governance allows for the inclusion of pertinent staff in the decision-making process prior to moving toward a major change or enterprise transformation effort. Historically, information technology (IT) staff have not been included in decision making as it applies to change initiatives until they are required in the overall systems/solutions development life cycle. This exclusion of IT staff has been shown to cause a higher level of risk, and actuated issues with schedule, budget, and successful implementation of or transition to a new means of doing and supporting business.

Exploring the Impact of Flexible and Permeable Work-Life Boundaries in a Mobile World

Work-life boundaries are often studied on a segmentation-integration continuum, which fails to consider that boundaries can be multidimensional. A flexible boundary allows work to be completed at different times and locations, whereas a permeable boundary allows for the integration of work and personal demands. This chapter examines boundary flexibility, home boundary permeability, and work boundary permeability as separate constructs, positing eight possible boundary configurations. In this exploratory research, differences in demographics, technology usage, work-family conflict, and work and life satisfaction for 65 knowledge workers who maintain different levels of boundary flexibility and permeability are examined. This research offers a new boundary configuration framework, which should guide future research and organizational policy.